Nova Albion Steampunk Convention In Brief

Friday I piled far too many shoes into my little Civic and trundled down to my local Steampunk convention, Nova Albion in San Jose. They took a hiatus last year so it was nice to have it back again, for one thing, I can take many shoes. And hats. And…

“Sherry with soup and fish; hock and calaret with roast meat; punch with turtle; champagne with whitebait; port with venison; port or burgundy with game; sparkling wines between the roast and the confectionery; madeira with sweets; port with cheese, and for dessert, port, tokay, madeira, sherry and claret.”
~ Daniel Pool
(Never forgetting that after dinner the ladies left the gentlemen to their brandy.)

Oh, what a lovely piston you have there!

It was fun! Hats and shoes were worn, outfits malfunctioned, panels were postulated, liquor was drunk. You know, as happens at these things. I wish I had time for a fully detailed day-by-day report but frankly, my dear Gentle Reader, you probably don’t care. You can see all the outfits and more steampunk fashion over on Retro Rack.

Paneling in a silly hat.

You see, my week pretty mostly (metaphorically) caught on fire and I lost two days of writing time, three days of blogging, most of my sanity, and all my good humor as a result. It’s practically impossible for me to write comedy when grumpy ~ fancy that? If I’m not careful I might start killing off all my characters George R. R. Martin style, and then where would we be?

Don’t worry about the current book, I have backups for my backups and I didn’t lose anything, except those two days when I should have been writing and instead was dashing about madly in 100 degree weather like a slowly frying chicken with her head cut off. You see, as I leave for France in 10 days and a have am million things do do before then, I can ill afford lost writing time right now. Guess who will be typing away Saturday night and most of Sunday? Yeah, the joys of being self employed. Oh dear, now the grump is leaking into my post, I do apologize, my dear. I should probably go now.

GAIL’S DAILY DOSE

Your Moment of Parasol . . .She had this parasol hooked into an egg beater handle thingy and it spun when you cranked it!
(I refuse to fight LJ for the next hour to get it faced properly, sorry, no time)

BIG FAT SPOILER ALERT on the Parasol Protectorate series! Really, DON’T READ THE BLURB ON AMAZON if you haven’t read the other books first!
The Omnibus hardback editions are limited run through the SciFi Bookclub only.
The manga editions available in print.
Most short stories available in ebook form world wide!The first Finishing School book ~ OUT NOW, The second Finishing School book ~ Nov. 5, 2013